Scaling AI-Driven Deliberation for Responsible Infrastructure Development

Project summary

In regions of the world where public opinion translates into policy outcomes, public misconceptions and misunderstandings pose significant barriers to policy implementation and infrastructure development. Deliberative Polling is a method that helps the public to form and revise opinions, and to recognize misinformation. While Deliberative Polling® has been conducted hundreds of times and in 50+ countries, it currently can only be run by a handful of experts on campus. To support public discourse on infrastructure development globally, we are exploring how to transform this tool into a user-friendly, “plug and play” platform with the support of the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. We are currently focusing on the development of data centers with additional support from the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy.

Together with external partners, our team is extending the functionalities of the AI-assisted Stanford Online Deliberation Platform, designed based on the method of Deliberative Polling® to create a tool that cities and communities worldwide can easily implement for their regional infrastructure challenges. We have created templates for determining public opinion on a continuum of housing solutions to address homelessness as our first test case for scaling this approach, and we are currently working to develop templates for deliberations on data center development.